Punctuation Fight – SHORT STORY

Creatively, something very different to my usual short stories. Enjoy.

“No one likes you, full stop.”

Full Stop felt aggrieved and launched right back at Hashtag. “In this modern day and age you may start words, but I end them.” Sensing more animosity he fired into other targets. “And what are you laughing at? You’re both assholes!” Colon and semi-colon couldn’t exactly disagree.

Feeling enlivened and feeding off the fury Full Stop carried on unabated. “And Comma! What’s your problem? You’re like a prison shit, just a break in the sentence!”

Sensing their chance, Back Slash and Forward Slash aka Virgule’s teamed up. But no matter what they did they couldn’t touch the small but mighty Full Stop.

Looking around Full Stop had his Gladiator moment. “Are you not entertained?”*

“By the way, thanks for teaming up on that Speech Mark and Question Mark.” Feeling left out Exclamation Mark let his presence be known. “You too!” added Full Stop.

Just as Full Stop’s ego was inflating quicker than Zimbabwean currency, the Bracket Brother’s appeared, eager to rain/shit/piss on the parade, to let Full Stop know that they could parenthesise him at will. (.)

*No, asterisk was not.

“Stfu asterisk. Where’s Obelix when you need him?!” Cue muted laughs.

Sensing movement they all raced back to the keyboard from the table, settling back on to the keys as they were illuminated, knowing soon they would be at the mercy of dirty jabbing fingers once more, and temporarily they were united knowing they would be depressed many times before the next break.

33 thoughts on “Punctuation Fight – SHORT STORY”

But at the end of the day the singular grammar thugs were trumped by the mighty run-on sentence which outlasted them all with his annoying endlessness and avoidance of navigational insertions and still managed to score a free pint at Ye Olde Locale Pub where the clientele consisted mainly of drunken writers with focus issues and a limp grasp of when to just shut up and stop typing…

This is a good idea, man! If you tighten it up in a few places (for instance, maybe change ‘In this modern day and age’ to just ‘In this day and age’), it’d be a clever, short read that’d be good on an English grammar website/revision website/similar… Anywhere with a focus on English, and in particular its rules, would be a good place to put this piece. Nice one, geeza.